Business and water do mix, shows the latest WME Media conference. Richard Collins showcases the issues, cases studies and business case for going water wise.

When it comes to water prices, views are all over the place. A snap online poll by WME ahead of last month’s Excellence in Industrial & Commercial Water conference revealed most expect prices to jump by 16-30 per cent in the next five years.

But a surprisingly high 28 per cent of respondents predicted a mere 1-15 per cent price hike, another 23 per cent put it at 31-45 per cent and only 11 per cent reckoned it would be over that.

The optimists are in for a shock. Former Victoria deputy premier John Thwaites, the conference keynote (pictured), said Victoria was in line for a 60 per cent price hike by 2013 under a recent ruling by the Essential Services Commission.

In South Australia, Water Security Commissioner Robyn McLeod said the price of non-residential water use will rise over the next five years to reflect the full cost of water.

Water supply costs at BlueScope Steel’s Port Kembla plant in NSW have soared 55 per cent this year thanks to a new desalination plant, and BlueScope’s Oscar Gregory expects that to double in “ensuing years”.

GHD senior water consultant Chris Hertl said he expected prices in south-east Queensland to rise from $2.10/kL to $3-4 within five years.

Swimming against this tide, however, was Orica’s Ross Fraser, who has an intriguing view on price. He told conference delegates prices will likely be capped by the cost of reverse osmosis (RO), the treatment process at the heart of desalinating seawater.

With all the mainland state capitals by 2011 having desalination plants as their failsafe supply, Fraser argues desal water will set the price benchmark. In Sydney, prices are scheduled to rise from $1.60/kL to $2.10 by 2012, a 31 per cent jump, and Fraser expects that it will not go much beyond that.

The question resonates because the rise of desalination may also see public and regulatory pressure to conserve water ease off. Cost could become a new efficiency driver, but that depends on the price pathway laid out by the states’ utility regulators and water authorities.

BlueScope’s security
“We see the management of water as increasingly urgent in this country,” BlueScope’s GM for iron and slab told the conference.

The steel-maker is by far the biggest water user in NSW, consuming a massive 32ML of fresh water a day, although 20ML of that is recycled municipal sewage.

Its long-run goal of “zero use of primary dam water” underpins an integrated strategy that includes diversifying sources, pursuing efficiency, contingency planning for water restrictions and demonstrating to the community its wise use of water.

“We see it as a long-term security issue. Our right to exist on our sites depends on demonstrating we are using the resource properly,” Gregory told the conference.

They’ve done the sums on a range of options (see graph). He doesn’t see a role for BlueScope in water trading, and was also coy about its investigations into stormwater harvesting, saying they were still trying to get a handle on the treatment requirements.

Orica’s opportunity
There were plenty of other positive tales to tell. Orica’s chlor alkali plant in the west of Melbourne is exploring a scheme to harvest rain and stormwater from the 8ha Goodman site next door. It would be the state’s first commercial water sharing scheme, though they have roped in City West Water to act as intermediary.

They could learn a thing or two from Orica in Sydney, which has been selling purified groundwater to several neighbours after being lumped with a clean up notice by the EPA for the highly contaminated Botany aquifer. In a paper titled ‘Obligation to Opportunity’, Fraser chronicled the conceptual tension between two approaches to the issue.

“We decided we had a water supply treatment plant rather than a groundwater treatment plant. It is a different way of thinking and operating, with redundant pumps, a requirement to have permanent expertise on-site and that sort of thing, all to make sure we do not go off-line,” he said.

New life in Mars?
In 2005, on the NSW Central Coast, dam levels were at 12 per cent, the council was buying in water and the price was slated to climb 73 per cent, while sewer discharge costs were heading up by 700 per cent. Mars Australia was nervous and tasked Ross Mail to lead a technology review to look for onsite recycling options for its 350-500kL of discharge per day.

He ruled out Upflow Anaerobic Sludge Beds (UASB) as better on dilute waste streams, Sub-Surface Flow Reed Beds as too large and slow to mature, and the vibrating VSEP system with centrifuge and membrane bioreactor as too costly.

The all round winner, and what has recently been launched, was a two-stage biological digestion process followed by a tertiary system of ultra-filtration, RO and UV disinfection.

It saves Mars $2.2 million a year, but it is the breakdown of cost reductions that is interesting. The treatment plant is saving $1.5 million on discharge fees alone, $295,000 on sludge handling, $225,000 in labour costs, $151,000 in water bills and $29,000 in associated chemicals. That’s the true value of water.

The energy-water link
Australian Vinyls has also gone down the recycling route, this year opening a $5.5 million Water Recycling Plant at its site in Melbourne that promises to halve mains use to 340ML a year.

It uses 2.26kWh of energy for every kilolitre of water produced. This connection between energy and water raised its head several times through the conference.

ERM’s Alec Tang framed it this way: “Energy is required to provide water, but water is needed to generate electricity and water is needed to drive the global carbon cycle. They are inextricably linked.”

Exergy MD Paul Bannister explored the technical synergies. For example, a 1GJ reduction in cooling load equates to 500 litres of water saved in cooling towers. A recent airport audit found cooling load savings of about 20,000GJ, which cut water use by 10,000m3.

But Bannister stressed the need to balance energy and water priorities to find the optimum environmental outcome.

“Water-cooled chillers are roughly twice as efficient as air-cooled chillers, which equates to energy demand,” he said. “So you have to ask if an air-cooled chiller is always the way to go. Perhaps a better option is to consider harvesting rainwater for cooling towers.”

All of it points to the need for a much more sophisticated grasp of water management in Australian business.